Normally, we don’t regard revenge as a laudable response to wrongdoing. 98 Hence, it seems odd to claim that the constraints on misbehavior imposed by the coercive success of the modern state are a problem. This seems especially true where the state creates an apparatus for punishing those that wrong others. Hence, the criminal law constrains my ability to pursue vengeance against the person who kills my children, but it will also step in to punish the murderer. While revenge is not generally celebrated in our culture, we do place value on the agency of wronged victims, greater agency than is allowed by the impersonal, third-party apparatus of the criminal law.